Good morning, Everyone - it's good to see you here, ready to start another binge-free week.
Heather - yes, this can be the last binge! I see by your ticker that you have already come so incredibly far - CONGRATULATIONS! Just keep on going. Even if you do fall off the wagon, as you recently did, it's important to just climb back on. But then, you know that, don't you?
Shay - glad to see you this morning. Just keep trying, my friend. The time will come when it will feel "right" to start getting serious about eating right. You will know when that time is here for you. Keep checking in with us - we will do what we can to inspire you.
Well, I had a bit of a blip last Saturday. I went to the supermarket, intending to buy groceries, and while there could find nothing that interested me - except the bulk candy aisle. So I dipped into each bin and bought a relatively small collection of assorted candies and... had that for dinner! Truly, I don't know what the heck came over me.
But it also wasn't as bad as it could have been. Firstly, the bag of candies was much, much smaller than it would have been in the past. Secondly, I did not start in on them in the car on my drive home from the market. Thirdly, I did not sit in front of the TV and scarf them down. Fourthly, I did not eat a bag of candy and then follow it up with a full-course dinner. So all of that is a step in the right direction.
I am not justifying my behavior, though. I know it was the wrong set of decisions to have made around food. Still, I can't say that I felt/feel altogether bad about it.
On my way home from the market that day (I live in a rural community and have about a 30 min drive home), I had plenty of time to reflect on having bought "garbage" for dinner. I remembered that when I was a kid, Dad was home for dinner pretty much every night and Mom cooked dinners essentially to please him. Once in a blue moon, Dad had meetings or whatever, and wasn't going to be home for supper. That's when Mom went nuts with the dinner thing: One time she took us all to the supermarket and told us to pick out the biggest most delicious looking candy bar that looked good to us, and just have it for dinner. Another time she created a bizarre concoction where she lined the bottom of a casserole dish with uncooked bacon strips, followed by a layer of canned pear slices, followed by some sort of yellow cake batter - and baked the whole thing in the oven till it the bacon was crisp and the cake was done. She served this thing with a vanilla sauce and called it dinner. It was absolutely delicious, and of course, never to be repeated. Another time she made "cherry soup" (don't ask me how) with Farina pudding...
So those were special, oddball treats for when my Dad wasn't coming home for dinner. It was also her way of giving herself permission to either not cook at all, or get creative in the kitchen in a very different sort of way. Kind of like throwing paint at a canvass and calling it art, dontcha think?
Fast forward to 2/16/2008 - my BF had been here for the past nearly 2 weeks and I'd been cooking dinner for us each of those nights. Last Saturday he had someplace else to go and wasn't going to be home for supper. So I guess my Mom's "go nuts" button got pushed and I suddenly convinced myself that eating nothing but candy was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. There's something just a little disturbing about seeing Tom in the "Daddy not coming home" role, and yet - there it is... Truth is, while I was eating the candy, I enjoyed every single piece of it. When it stopped tasting good, I threw the rest in the trash (there wasn't much left). Afterwards, of course, I was tripping on sugar and chocolate and felt totally crappy - but also a little proud of myself for noticing that and being aware that it really wasn't something I wanted to repeat in a hurry.
So yesterday, Sunday, was the "day after" and also my birthday. I woke up sick to my stomach and hung over from all the sugar. Poor Tom - he just couldn't do anything right for me yesterday morning, even though he tried. It wasn't till a few hours later, after I've had a chance to put some decent wholesome food in my stomach, that I began to feel myself again - and from then on really enjoyed my birthday. Some friends of ours had invited us to go to a Gospel concert (one of their daughters was in it) yesterday afternoon, and they'd made a wonderful birthday dinner for me involving everything from soup to nuts. It was a really nice day.
Today is President's Day and I have the day off. The weather is way crazy out there, which means to I probably won't get out to do any sort of exercise. But I think that's OK - it's nearly 10am and Tom and I are still in our PJs and neither of us is anxious to do anything about that. We may just hang out here and be lazy all day. Plenty of good solid food in the house and nothing to binge on - life is good.
Thanks for "listening," y'all...
Have a great week--